


Look to the sky for love

by marcicat



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-14
Updated: 2012-03-14
Packaged: 2017-11-02 00:29:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/363024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marcicat/pseuds/marcicat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a story about Darcy Lewis and Bucky Barnes, because they are both clearly awesome, and yet are unlikely to show up in the Avengers movie. Really, I figure it's a good thing I'm not in charge of the movie, or else it would be all hoodies and accidentally getting transformed into kittens, and the whole "summer blockbuster" thing would be more like a summer block party with occasional superhero cameos. </p><p>Also, this story and canon are like ships that pass in the night -- they might be in the same ocean, but that's about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Look to the sky for love

She knew who he was, of course. Everyone knew that. James Barnes was back from the dead -- or possibly he'd never been dead at all, or he was a time traveler from another universe, or maybe an alien clone. The rumor mill wasn't great at specifics.

Definitely not good enough for her to predict that he'd loom out of the shadows at her as she walked out of the cafeteria. It was a straight corridor, for crying out loud. How did he even _find_ shadows?

She took the opportunity to stare. It was the first time she'd actually seen him up close and personal -- you'd think a metal robot arm would be enough to ID a guy, but not so much around the base. Still, it wasn't hard to match him up to the memo SHIELD had sent around. It had contained everything they felt was pertinent to share: name, rank, physical description, if lost please return to Captain America. (No mention of the alien clone possibility.)

"Hey," she said, because what the hell -- why not? He was staring at her too, and her hands were full of lunch trays.

"Are you lost?" she asked, curious. He didn't look lost, but he was quickly approaching the point where 'strong, silent type' edged over the line into 'creepy silent stalker type.'

"No," he said finally. "I was looking for you."

Her mind cycled through 'wow, that's not creepy at all,' followed by 'maybe he _is_ an alien clone,' then detoured into questions about whether or not anyone had ever installed the Loki-detectors they'd been diagramming in the labs. Once she realized he was still waiting for an answer, she said, "Why?"

"Steve told me you have a --" He gestured to his ears, then mimed what she really hoped was supposed to be a scroll wheel.

“ipod?” she asked. "Yeah. You want one?" Probably someone was supposed to be in charge of stuff like that.

He shook his head, then bit his lip and looked down in what appeared to be a calculated ‘please be swayed by my boyish charm’ maneuver. It probably worked better without the robot death arm and the thigh holsters, honestly. "Just the ear part," he said.

Huh. She handed him the trays -- he took them automatically, then looked surprised to be holding them. "Don't drop those," she told him. "Or squish them together; there's juice boxes on the bottom one." She held the door for him at the stairs, and he raised his eyebrows.

"Stairs are where it's at," she explained. "I took the elevator my first day, and Director Fury got on right behind me. Hand to god, most awkward thirty seconds of my life. Plus, every time I use the stairs I figure I can drop two minutes off my gym time."

He didn't answer, but she didn't really expect him to, and they climbed in silence for a few minutes. It was six levels back up to the labs Jane had claimed for her own. (Darcy wasn't sure if that was to give SHIELD the maximum amount of time to figure out containment if they lost control of the cube and it started eating its way down through the building, or if it was because no one knew what would happen if they actually managed to create a dimensional portal slash rainbow bridge, and those labs were the most out of the way space available.) She thought about trying to explain all that, and just went with, "It's possible Jane just likes having roof access. Sorry for the long walk."

"You have roof access?" he asked, with enough interest that she thought maybe she should have read that memo more carefully.

On the other hand, nothing like going right to the source. "Do you have a thing about rooftops?" she said. "Heights? Are you even allowed to go outside?"

"Sure," he said easily. She looked at him carefully, or as carefully as you could when you were also walking up a flight of stairs and trying not to be obnoxious about staring at the metal death arm. He didn't look like he was lying, and it wasn't like she was a big fan of the SHIELD rulebook herself. And she _had_ asked. Plausible deniability was a wonderful thing.

"In that case, yeah, we do. Come by anytime. Our roof access is your roof access, and all that."

He said, "Thank you," and she shrugged.

"This is us." One blank SHIELD corridor looked very much like any other, but someone (Erik, but they all pretended they didn't know) had taped up sheets of paper with arrows printed on them that pointed towards the labs. (When they got bored, they scribbled stick figure Avengers on them saying dumb things. Usually exact quotes.)

She swiped her card at the door and led the way into chaos. That probably meant things were going well, unless it meant they were all about to die. It was hard to tell sometimes.

"Is it always like this?" Barnes asked.

She took the trays back from him and started rooting through her desk. "Sometimes Stark comes up here and they blow stuff up," she said, distracted by the search. "Other than that, yeah, pretty much. Here." She handed over her backup earbuds. "I knew I had a pair in there somewhere."

She didn't ask what he wanted them for, and he didn't offer. He looked a little freaked out, actually, but that was probably the lab and not the earbuds, unless she really didn't want to know what he was going to do with them.

"Thank you," he said again, somehow edging backwards towards the door without appearing to move. She glanced away when a loud crash echoed in the room, and when she looked back, he was gone.

***

She didn’t expect to see him again any time soon. What she expected even less was for Dr. Banner to show up at her desk the very next day.

“I heard — you have roof access?” he asked. (SHIELD had sent a memo about Dr. Banner too. ‘Don’t piss him off,’ it said.)

So she said, “Absolutely,” and led the way. “Are you sure you don’t want a coat, or something?”

“I’ll be fine,” he said, and then added, “Thank you,” like an afterthought. She left him to it — December in New York was a cold time to lurk on a roof, or whatever he was planning.

Barnes himself put in an appearance at lunchtime, when she went to pick up their food. He looked more 'slouching' than 'looming,' though, so she handed him the trays again. "Earbuds working okay?" she asked.

He nodded. She got the feeling he was one of those people who'd be just as happy walking in complete silence, but hey -- he was the one who'd come to her, not the other way around.

"So I think you should know, Dr. Banner's on our roof right now. I had no idea roof space was so desirable."

"We run together," Barnes said. It was, she realized, the first information he'd actually offered. "Sometimes all this gets a little... too much."

She looked sideways at him. "You know there's cameras on the roof too, right?" It wasn't that she thought he was going to do anything _wrong_ , exactly. Just that he might not be as alone as he thought.

He smiled -- it was a tiny, tiny smile, and it was gone quickly, but it was there. "Be a pretty big security risk if there weren't."

There was an awkward pause. Clearly a subject change was in order. "Is it true that Steve took out half a dozen agents and a wall when he woke up, and ended up barefoot in Times Square?"

The smile lasted longer that time. "Is that the story?" he asked. (In fact, it was only one of many stories circulating about Captain America, but it was the one most suited for public consumption.) She waited.

“He wasn't barefoot," Barnes said finally. "He told me that much. Mostly because he was so mad they'd messed it up -- you're trying to convince a guy that everything's fine, and he wakes up with his boots on?"

Well, that was five dollars she'd lost to the pool. “Huh.” The only other thing she had money riding on was whether or not Coulson was going to let Thor get away with lighting something on fire for Solstice (Jane said no, Darcy said yes, definitely — she was pretty sure Coulson was a closet pyro).

“Your turn,” she said, because there was more than one way to encourage people to share.

He looked startled, and then he narrowed his eyes at her. Eventually, he asked, “How come you call Bruce ‘Dr. Banner,’ but don’t use anyone else’s titles?”

She held the door for him at the top of the stairwell. “I try not to make him irritated.” Most everyone else she didn’t care if she irritated. (She’d have been happy to call Steve ‘Captain Rogers,’ but he twitched whenever someone said the C-word.)

When it looked like not only was he not going to respond, he wasn’t planning to actually enter the lab, she said, “Come in, if you want. We have Solstice cookies. Or you could go hang out with Dr. Banner on the roof.”

“I have training,” he said, but the door opened and Dr. Banner was right there, Santa hat in one hand and a fistful of cookies in the other. For what had to be the thousandth time, Darcy wondered why there were no windows in the doors. They didn’t all have super-powered reflexes, after all.

Luckily, Barnes rescued the lunch trays, and Dr. Banner looked gratifyingly surprised to see them standing there. “Sorry,” he said. (It wasn’t completely clear whether he was apologizing for almost hitting them with the door, or for taking so many cookies, but he hustled himself off down the corridor.)

“Come back tomorrow,” she called after him. “Erik’s making punch.”

Barnes followed her into the lab without further protests. “I thought you science-types were supposed to be hard at work all the time, doing — whatever it is that you do.”

It was impossible to tell whether or not he was kidding. The guy was probably awesome at poker. She raised both eyebrows at him. “It’s called work, not jail. Plus, it’s Christmas.”

“I thought you were celebrating Solstice,” he said.

Okay, that bumped it to more like 90% sure he was kidding. “We’re an inclusive bunch.” That seemed safe either way, and he grinned (only slightly disturbing) and loitered around for a few minutes, poking at things. She never saw him at the snacks, but he had a cookie sticking out of his mouth when he finally headed out the door. She pretended not to notice.

***

The next day there were three of them. (And let the record note, explaining Festivus to Captain America was an experience not to be forgotten. Or repeated, hopefully.)

“It’s for the rest of us,” Erik said patiently, and Hulk nodded. Apparently there had been a deal -- Solstice was Dr. Banner’s; Festivus was Hulk’s. Also, he liked punch, which was sort of fifty percent alarming and fifty percent adorable.

Steve nodded too, in that way that meant ‘I’m humoring you so we can stop talking about this.’ He gave Barnes a look she couldn’t interpret, and said, “So this is where you’ve been disappearing off to.”

He got a shrug in reply. She loved watching them together — with everyone else, Steve was all military politeness, and she had a sneaking suspicion Barnes was using the earbuds to keep people from talking to him. But with each other, it was obvious they were brothers, or as good as. “Punk,” Barnes muttered, and Steve knocked into his shoulder with an easy grin.

The moment was broken by a sudden whooshing silence from the main lab, a half second before an alarm started wailing. It was, unfortunately, not an unfamiliar experience.

"Darcy!" Jane yelled. "Where's the fire extinguisher?"

"By the door!" she yelled back. "Right where you left it!"

Then there were a few tense minutes of actually using the fire extinguisher (harder than it looked), and of course the Hulk wanted to help, which was about as successful as you might imagine. Every time it felt like they had things under control, another group of SHIELD agents would burst in and set everything off again.

She missed lunch by a mile, but it didn't seem important until Barnes showed up with trays in the middle of the afternoon. "It's a Festivus miracle," she said. He actually laughed, making her wonder how much pop culture he and Steve were caught up on. Maybe they were taking classes, or something.

"You're welcome," he said. "It seemed like the least I could do."

"Pretty sure Stark has you beat on the _least_ you could do, what with the laughing and posting pictures to the public server. But I know what you meant, and thank you." The exciting part of the emergency -- fire suppression and wrestling with a giant boar-like creature they'd managed to transport across half a dozen galaxies -- had been over relatively quickly. Unfortunately, the boar had fleas.

Which meant hours of scouring the labs with black lights to find them all and collect them. (Darcy had suggested just bug-bombing the whole place, but one of the other scientists flipped out. He had ants, or something.) And _then_ SHIELD dropped the ‘oh by the way, you’ll have to stay overnight for observation’ news.

“We’re all staying,” he said, and it took her a second to figure out what he was talking about. “Steve told me to tell you,” he added.

She ignored the fact that at least half the people he was talking about were essentially homeless, and stayed on the base all the time anyway, and focused on the fact that it really was a nice gesture. “Party in the cafeteria?”

“Just dinner. Party’s in the gym. Someone told Thor that Festivus celebrations are supposed to include ‘feats of strength.’”

She tried to picture it. “I’ll bring my camera,” she said.

He lingered deliberately around her desk, and it wasn’t like she didn’t have actual work to do that didn’t involve flea-catching. She only got as far as opening the program before giving in. “You want a pudding cup, or something?”

“No. Well, sure, but I was just thinking maybe you had an extra --” This time his hand gesture was indecipherable. “It’s quieter here,” he finished, looking at her like that was all supposed to make sense.

She tapped a finger on the keyboard. It _was_ quiet; they’d had to send all the decorations to get decontaminated (aka ‘bug-bombed somewhere where ant-guy wouldn’t get upset’). And the only people left in the lab were either busy trying to make up for lost time or busy making sense of the morning’s debacle. Maybe he had a non-roof-oriented desire for semi-solitude.

Or, okay, maybe SHIELD had sent him to keep an eye on them. Who could tell?

“I’ve got an extra stool,” she said.

“I’ll take the floor.” He slipped around the edge of her space and settled into a space she’d swear had never been shadowy before. “Thank you,” he said, just like Dr. Banner. Then he pulled out a book. She stared at him for a few more seconds, then shrugged. Back to work.

***

Somehow, ‘no uniforms’ turned into ‘pajamas welcome’ at the party, and she dozed off somewhere between the second round of arguing over carol lyrics and the third round of handing out blankets. She woke up when someone dropped a pillow on her head.

“If you’re sleeping, you have to do it in the designated sleep zone,” Erik told her. “That’s the rule.” He pointed to a corner that already contained Dr. Banner and Natasha, along with a couple people she recognized from the lab.

“You just made that up,” she said, once her brain caught up to her ears.

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “But we need this couch. For team-building.”

She rubbed her eyes clear and thought about it. Team-building was a catch-all term for ‘stuff SHIELD’s not going to like, but we’re totally going to do it anyway.’ “I’m totally awake,” she decided.

He handed her a bottle of water and shooed her off the couch. “Be totally awake somewhere else. Get some food.” How _he_ managed to be so awake was one of the great mysteries of the universe.

She shuffled towards the snacks, trailing one of the blankets. “Lewis!” someone called. “Over here!”

She blinked, but no, that was still Barnes, _waving_ to her from where he was sitting (on the floor, again) with Steve. And he was smiling. She worked her way across the room towards them. “Hey,” she said.

“Got your camera?” Barnes asked.

She handed it over and slid down the wall next to them. “Point, click, you can check them later,” she told him. “Wake me if we need to make a run for it?”

“Of course,” Steve said, while Barnes was still examining the camera. He even produced another pillow from somewhere. Barnes snapped a picture.

It seemed rude to just wander over and fall asleep on them -- but, she reminded herself, it was Christmas. All the rules were different. Not that she knew if Barnes even celebrated Christmas, but Steve did. And of course, technically they were still celebrating Festivus, even though it must have been over for hours.

“Hey,” she said again. “Merry everything.”

She caught Steve just as he was yawning -- a huge, jaw-cracking yawn -- and he blushed. “Sorry,” he said. “Merry Christmas.”

Barnes just laughed. “Merry everything to you too.” And then -- “Are they lighting that couch on fire?”

She smiled, and fell asleep.

THE END  



End file.
